Modern technical systems normally comprise a plurality of technical devices which interact to guarantee a desired result, for example the production of capital goods or the generation and provision of electrical energy by a power station. A failure of a technical device in the system or a device not operating at its optimum efficiency results in at least an inferior quality of the goods produced or the services provided, if not in the failure of the entire technical system.
Downtimes caused by the resulting production outages result in high consequential costs and quality deficiencies are reflected by high quality costs.
It is therefore absolutely necessary to employ diagnostic systems by means of which the technical devices of a system can be monitored.
Diagnostic systems are known in which reference values are obtained during the operation of the technical device, where monitoring starts at a point in time at which the recording of the reference is well advanced or already concluded.
The disadvantage of this method is that the time from the start of operation of the technical device until the conclusion of the learning process in respect of the recording of the reference values of the technical device is not monitored and thus faults which occur can lead to the failure of the device.
Other known analysis methods use criteria which, although they fulfill the basic requirements for operating the device (for example monitoring for a maximum permitted operating temperature being exceeded), mean that these types of methods can for example not take account of any manufacturing tolerances of the device exploited during manufacturing or specific properties of the device which only come to light during operation or detect small deviations which do not lead to failure but which do pose a risk to optimum operation.